Photo of this cover by cliff1066 via Flickr

Nevertheless there must be something more to the book mystery. Why not just go out and travel the world if discovery and experience are so important to you? Another dimension of the allure of the published word is the effort involved in reading and the lust for cognizant activity.

The act of reading is an act of learning. Every time an eye peruses a page of written text, the brain whips into action; picking out unknown words, new ways of speaking, new ideas, etc. It requires concentration and a willingness to struggle with tough concepts. Many people who reject the hobby of reading complain that it is “too much work”—that they can receive the experience encased in the syntax and diction through much easier means. These people are Walker Percy’s proverbial consumers. “The consumer is content to receive an experience…

Picture by nSeika via Flickr

We live in an age where there is a vast multitude of ways to entertain ourselves. Of the hundreds of channels on TV, most run programming twenty-four hours a day. Newspapers are delivered daily to households across the world; the internet never turns off. And of course, there are books. According to the American Library Association, in the United States alone there are over 117,000 libraries. “Since 1776, 22 million titles have been published”, and as of 2004, there were over 2.8 million books in print (Para Publishing).

Why?

What’s the point? In terms of technology (and in this day and age, what isn’t looked at in terms of technology?), books are outdated. An old, slow, difficult way of obtaining information and entertainment that only isolates people from the ‘mainstream’. With the popularity of websites like Twitter,